PRESENTERS

FABRICATING TRUTH

 

 

 

PALLAVI SWARANJALI, Carleton University

 

Forging Architecture: The Contronymic Nature of Architectural Creation in the work of

 

Indian Ar. B.V.Doshi

 

 

At the beginning of his career, Balkrishna Doshi worked in Le Corbusier’s office in Paris (1951-54) and later supervised his projects in India. Doshi admits how

 

hard it was to be a proponent of modern architecture in the newly independent India where he had to concoct ‘bizarre stories’ to explain Le Corbusier’s buildings.1

 

This paper studies three works of fiction - The Revelation, The Sacred Spring and The Legend of the Living Rock written by Doshi to accompany three built projects -

 

The Husain Doshi Gufa (Ahmedabad, 1992-95), the National Institute of Fashion Technology (Delhi, 1997) and Bharat Diamond Bourse (Mumbai, 1998). These

 

stories incorporate both myth/fantasy and reality employing the “ironic imagination,” which “permits an emotional immersion in, and rational reflection on,

 

imaginary worlds.”2 Doshi’s stories are invested with such verisimilitude that some mistook them to be real, while others aspired to create them. The stories are

 

effective not through the “‘willing suspension of disbelief,’ but rather through the ‘willing activation of pretense’.”3 His stories metonymically indicate the site/plot

 

of the building subject to imaginative habitation.

 

 

Doshi brings in memories, expectation and fantasies with meticulous care for site, project characteristics and history of the place. Husserl defined presentation as

 

perception or the consciousness of what now exists as present in person while memory and expectation as representation — the consciousness of something as-if,

 

but in touch with an actual past/being. Phantasy’s as-if, on the other hand, is unique in that it is directed precisely against actual existence. Doshi’s fantastical

 

stories are perceived first hand once the building is made. As opposed to the drawing, which stands as a representation of the building, the story presents itself via

 

the building and represents the building while the building represents and presents the story. Alternating between the two conditions, the story and the building vie

 

for the status of presentation and representation. With the misalignment or perhaps the seamlessness between fact and fiction, a space opens up between

 

architectural presentation and representation imparting a contronymic nature to Doshi’s architectural creation, where his architectural storytelling forges and in the

 

process architecture is forged.

 

 

1 Paths Uncharted. Ahmedabad: Vastu-Shilpa Foundation for Studies and Research in Environmental Design, 2015, Pg. 370

 

2 Saler, Michael. As If: Modern Enchantment and the Literary Pre-history of Virtual Reality. Oxford University Press, 2012, 30.

 

3 Saler, As If, 28.

 

4   Husserl, Edmund, and John B. Brough. Phantasy, Image Consciousness, and Memory, 1898-1925. Springer, 2005.

 

 

 

 

 

STEVEN BEITES, Laurentian University

 

Context Through Awareness

 

 

 

 

KATIE GRAHAM, Carleton University

 

Architectural Storytelling in Virtual Reality: How VR Can Expand on Architectural Perception

 

 

 

 

TED LANDRUM, University of Manitoba

 

Poetry as Research: Fabricating Architectural Truth

 

 

FABRICATING IN SITU

 

 

 

SCOTT GERALD SHALL, Lawrence Technological University

 

Borrowed Intelligence: Leveraging Industrial Fabrication To Evolve Building Production

 

 

 

 

NAHID AHMADI, Carleton University

 

Asphalt Deserts: Rethinking the Architecture of Surface Parking Lots

 

 

 

 

DIETMAR STRAUB, University of Manitoba

 

A Beautiful Waste of Time: Operating a Snow Academy

 

 

 

 

JENNIFER SMITH, Auburn University

 

INCREMENTAL: Resilience through Disaster-Relief Housing

 

 

 

 

BRYAN HE, University of Manitoba

 

Making of the Hakka Vernacular

 

 

 

SOCIAL FABRICS

 

 

 

VALENTINA DAVILA, McGill University

 

Down the Back Stairs: Servants’ Spaces in Montreal’s Square Mile

 

 

 

 

LAWRENCE BIRD, Winnipeg

 

Dominion

 

 

 

 

ELLEN GRIMES, School of the Art Institute of Chicago

 

History's Future Fabrics: New Models for Historic Ecologies

 

 

 

 

NIKOLE BOUCHARD, University of Wisconsin

 

(H)our House

 

 

 

 

RYAN STEC, Carleton University

 

Making Public Space: Examining Walter Lippmann & John Dewey’s pragmatism as a

 

constructive expansion to the spatial theory of public space

 

MEDIATING FABRICS

 

 

LANCELOT COAR, University of Manitoba

 

Lignes d’erre: Tracing the History and Future of Force Flow in Structures

 

 

 

 

FEDERICO GARCIA LAMMERS & JESSICA GARCIA FRITZ, South Dakota State University

 

Master Building Complex Forms in the Absence of Graphics

 

 

 

 

JOE KALTURNYK, Winnipeg

 

The Temporary and the Intermediate: Strategies for a Better Dinner